Welcome to the “How to melt a dragon – Master of Flame partybuffer guide”

First: This build is a compromise between PvE party buffer and decent dps. You won’t like it if you can’t imagine not being top dps in your party. I don’t PvP so i have no idea how this build works in PvP.
Second: This is not uncontested build, every changes are welcome 🙂
Third: English is not my native language, I hope you all understand my guide 😉

Okay, let’s start it!

Race choice: I recommend choosing one from these races: Human, Moon Elf, Sun Elf, Tiefling or Dragonborn. Aim for high amount of Charisma and secondly for Intelligence. Same thing adding ability scores.

Smolder: As Master of Flame we acquire new awesome mechanic called smolder. We apply smolder to our foes by using Fanning the Flame encounter or Scorching Burst at-will. Don’t let smolder disappear. Cast any spell that applies Chill on your enemy. Oh, smolder disappeared anyways… Now we got Rimefire Smolder that is even better! Remember to put Smolder wherever you can and stack Chill on your foes.

Heroic Feats:

-Weapon Mastery: 3/3 – we need lot of crit, never enough!
-Toughness: 3/3 – noticeable difference when you are over 70k HP, we lack in defense so more HP should compensate it just a bit, excluding 1mil hits or so 🙂
-Fight On: 5/5 – all of us love to spam with our encounters
-Blighting Power: 3/3 – you’re going to spread Chill like crazy
-Wizard’s Wrath: 2/3 – lot of our powers is AoE, little buff is always welcome
-Learned Spellcaster: 4/5 or 5/5 if your character is human
Arcane Enhancement: 2/3 if your character is human; it’s not superb feat, i just don’t see anything better to spend few points more
-You can also go for the Controlling Action: any/5 if your AP fills up to slow, sacrificing some featpoints from previous two skills, but you won’t – you will be daily monster without this one

Paragon Feats:

Renegade:

-Reaper’s Touch: 5/5 – pretty useful when you are near death and your encounters are on cooldown or temporary locked (thanks Demogorgon’s Madness, very thanks)
-Critical Power; 0/5 – “why??” 5% of our AP every 10 seconds… well, you’re going to get necklace with Action Points gain, at least blue or purple quality, that’s 2-3% every 3 seconds… 6-9% every 9 seconds – even better than this feat, don’t go for this one – it’s a waste
-Arcane Burst: 5/5 – each stack of Arcane Mastery increases our damage by 3%, max 5 stacks = 15% and that’s a nice buff to have
-Uncertain Allegiance: 5/5 – this is “must have” feat, it’s 5% crit chance all the time for you and your allies (if you don’t crit within 10 seconds there’s only one explanation – you’re dead)
-Abyss of Chaos: 0/5 – I have never tested this one, though it doesn’t sound good to me, our weapon damage isn’t too high to deal enormous damage with this feat
-Phantasmal Destruction: 5/5 – now that’s good thing – 15% cricital severity almost all the time
-Nightmare Wizardry: 0/5 – “you wrote it’s partybuffer guide why don’t use it?!”, yep it is, just… how hard is to get Combat Advantage… strike a foe from two sides, that’s all, who would waste feats for that?
-Chilling Advantage: 5/5 – free 10% chance to crit all the time (you will never unslot Chilling Presence)
-Masterful Arcane Theft: 0/5 – yeah i know it’s powerful buff (only for your own), up to 45% bonus damage for both these powers, if you think your crit is already insanely high – max this one 5/5 instead getting Chilling Advantage
-Chaos Magic: 1/1 – this is one of “secrets” of our buffs – it has awesome range 50 feets, so don’t worry, it will affect many of your allies, not only your party. With this one you (and allies) are getting one random buff from these three: Chaotic Growth (green): lot of healing (~20 x 4000) “ugh, healing? We have DC that do so” that’s true excluding situations when tank is dancing on campfire and full agro is pointed at you (we MoFs aren’t top dps, though we get really big aggro), Chaotic Nexus (blue): 4000 Armor Penetration and 30% chance to crit… yeah 30% more chance to crit… you and all your allies… for 10 seconds… Chaotic Fury (red): 4000 lifesteal (very useful to heal up) and 30% more damage (same as Chaotic Nexus)… Don’t tell me it’s not amazing since everyone benefit from this… Foes will melt like snowball thrown on the sun.
Thaumaturge:

-Tempest Magic: 5/5 – small boost for bossfights (you will appreciate this one when time is running out)
-Malevolent Surge: 0/5 – we MoFs don’t need such boost for trashmobs, we just cast some debuff on them and before we get close -they’re dead due to GWFs or other dps monsters 🙂
-Drifting Embers: 5/5 – you will spread Smolder like crazy whether you slot your Fanning the Flame into Spell Mastery or normal slot (I highly recommend Mastery)
-Snap Freeze: 0/5 – I don’t understand this part: “targets who are NOT affected by chill”, it’s just impossible
-Spell Twisting: 5/5 – as i said before “all of us love to spam with our encounters” 🙂 and this feat makes it much easier; warning: sometimes our encounter bar goes crazy with cooldown timers
-Elemental Reinforcement: 0/5 – I admit, up to 15% boost of our damage sounds very promising, if you have enough recharge speed you can get rid of Spell Twisting and max out this feat

If you don’t like my idea with Thaumaturge feats you can go for Opressor powers:

Opressor:

-Bitter Cold: 5/5 – 5% more damage to ALL foes. There’s no such thing as foe unaffected by Chill
-Severe Reaction: 0/5 – we have to avoid enemy strikes, we are not the tanks to get all the hits
-Twisting Immolation: 5/5 – 4 seconds Daze for Furious Immolation targets? Yes, please!
-Brisk Transport: 0/5 – 3 seconds? It’s not worth even 1 point :/
-Icy Veins: 5/5 – that’s why you went into this path. Permanent freeze for trashmobs/instant Chill stacks on boss. Though range isn’t even 1/3 of that what offers Chaos Magic, this approach may be risky if foe has Crowd Control immunity
-Frigid Winds: 0/5 – it could be useful but… we just spent all of our feat points and… most of mobs are dead before then even freeze (very thanks, dps monsters), so there is no point to debuff dead

-Tyranny of Dragons: Dragon’s Claws, Dragon’s Gaze, Draconic Armorbreaker (same reason as with first three Sharandar boons), Dragon’s Greed and… Dragon’s Thirst! Yes, this one. Congratulations, you just became bloodlust mage. With lot of Damage over Time (you have even more than needed… joke, never enough), your lifesteal heals you perfectly. After you get Dragon’s Thirst I recommend Dragon’s Fury to boost our crits.

-The Maze Engine: Warning – I haven’t completed this campaign yet, don’t know if some boons are bugged or don’t work at all. Abyssal Syphoning (honestly we can pick this or Abyssal Regeneration, doesn’t matter though since we’re lifesteal monsters…), Demonic Influence (if you lack CA bonus, sadly over 1000 of it’s value it has diminishing effect), 3rd boon, well depends how fast you get AP or how fast your stamina runs out, though I recommend Demonic Swiftness, last boon I guess I’d pick Baphomet’s Might for extra crit chance (hope this one has cooldown 6 seconds, not 60 as many boons…)

Powers:

-At Wills:
-Chilling Cloud: 4/4 – this one is little devil that helps you stack chill and freeze your foes (until they’re pretty dead)
-Scorching Burst: 4/4 – most powerful at will we have, unfortunately it has too long charge time to spam with it (generates Arcane Mastery Stacks if you followed my feats)

-Class Features
-Chilling Presence: 4/4 – 8% bonus damage for each stack of Chill on your foe and max 6 stacks means 48% bonus damage; doubled if target is frozen, 10% bonus crit chance all the time if you followed my feats 🙂
-Critical Conflag… NOPE! 0/4
-Swath of Destruction 4/4 – YES! why not critical conflagration you ask? (yeah I admit as I was newbie CW i was using CC until i found Swath) CC provides 20% more critical severity only for you, it’s not party wide. Applying Smolder with every crit you say? Remember Fanning the Flame encounter and feat? And Scorching Burst? These are your ways to spread Smolder. Now Swath of Destruction boosts your Smolder (and Rimefire Smolder i hope) damage by (sorry, description lacks some numbers info in first tier of this feat, so let’s just pray it works as intended) 60% and debuffs foes affected by Smolder by… 20% for you and all your allies… aw yeah… Since we never drop Smolder from the enemy, everyone benefit from Smolder all the time

-Encounter powers:
-Fanning the Flame: 4/4 – this is the power that forced you to choose Master of Flame path. It’s powerful Area of Effect + Damage over Time spell. Be sure to cast it on toughest foe (or second to him, remember about dps monsters that kill biggest enemies in a blink of the eye). It spreads Smolder to nearby foes and gathers is back, also when lesser mobs affected by Smolder die, they unleash burst of damage that hurts main target; I recommend to put this spell into Spell Mastery
-Icy Terrain: 4/4 – damage done by this power isn’t enormous… c’mon who cares! It’s your main spell to freeze the enemies (it has no target limit, remember that), and Chill provided by this spell keeps up our Smolder; also another AoE DoT spell
-Conduit of Ice: 4/4 – another spell with low damage, also another AoE DoT, also you are going to love it since our build is mainly DoT, refreshes applied Chill if I read description correctly
-Ray of Enfeeblement: 4/4 (wow, first time I wrote it correctly) – awesome debuff spell, cast it on boss and let your allies kill him fast. Stack Arcane Mastery for longer duration of it’s effect
-Steal Time: 4/4 – good slowing and stunning AoE for packs of mobs
-Shield: 4/4 – yeah, really, I hope you won’t be using Shield too often but if your tank is dead it can save your life, shield takes much damage and you are still alive, don’t underestimate it’s power

-Daily powers:
-Oppressive Force: 4/4 – this power is striking many times and generates Arcane Mastery stack, that’s why I choose it over Ice Knife (remember that we’re basing on DoT), good to use on bosses with adds (maybe after Fanning the Flame, hm?)
-Furious Immolation: 4/4 – gathers mobs into one group, works similar to the Arcane Singularity, just much, much faster. And looks pretty cool (benefits from opressor feat if you took that path)

Gear:
-Weapon: I recommend Twisted weapon set for maximum boosting our damage. If you are far far away from obtaining this set, try with Elemental Fire set or Burning set and it will be fine also. Or Mulhorand if you don’t like refining. Boost your main hand with Chilling Cloud Artifact Power for nice AoE effect. Boost your offhand with Swath of Destruction Artifact Class feature. You can take Chilling Presence boost but it won’t be such effective as Swath.
-Armor: you can get any that has: power, critical chance, armor penetration or recovery in stats. My choice were: Dusk Raid Robes, Dusk Assault Cap, Elemental Dragonflight Raid Armlets and Elemental Drowcraft Assault Shoes
-Jewelry: try (it’s a good word) to take as best as you can from: Ring of rising power and ring of rising precision. Adamant personalized (or something like that) rings with two slots also are good to begin with
-Artifact gear: I strongly recommend getting Lostmauth set (yeah I know, damage is insane), if you think it’s too high, take Valindra’s set (both have AP gain necklace, it’s must have) it’s good if you like permanent freeze your foes (you don’t, because they’re dead before freezing, remember?), or even new Orcus/Baphomet/Demogorgon set (no, I haven’t tested it yet)
-shirt and pants: Gemmed Exquisite Elemental Shirt, Gemmed Exquisite Elemental Pants. Cheaper version: Drowcraft Tunic, Drowcraft Tights
-Artifacts: Lantern of Revelation, (crit, arpen, CA bonus) Sigil of Control Wizard (power, crit), Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting/Shard of Valindra’s Crown/Shard of Orcus’ Wand (depends which set you choose), Wheel of Elements (nice boosting depending of choice)/Thayan Book of the Dead (crit, arpen, AP gain)/Sigil of Devoted(power, defense, instant daily)
-Enchantments:
-armor enchantment – even Lesser Soulforged is enough if we fail, we’re getting 2nd chance. We’re not the tanks to use Negation enchantment;
-weapon enchantment: for pure buffer i’d recommend Terror or Plaguefire enchantments, just… many tanks and healers are using these two enchantments so one of them would be wasted during battle. Well, I recommend Vorpal enchantment, since we stack tons of critical chance, it would be a waste to not buff ourself, in fact – use any of these three, use that one you like most, all three are pretty good;
-offense enchantment: for low geared wizards: Radiant or Azure enchantments, what you lack more; for better geared wizards: Brutal enchantments: power + crit (at higher ranks)
-defense enchantment: Dark enchantment (never enough of lifesteal/before you get final boons from Tyranny of Dragons it might be hard without lifesteal) or Radiant/Azure enchantments if your wizard has to be little squishy tank
-utility enchantments: Dragon Hoard (for Refinement points) or Dark enchantments (for movement speed) or… Azure echantments if you don’t have yet powers maxed our 4/4 (I guess you won’t use other than I listed in encounters tab)
-don’t forget about armor reinforcement kits (tip: bind kit to armor that you will use for long time, not that will be salvaged in 2 days); best would be Critical chance or Power kit
-our goals are to have at least 60% ArPen; as much crit as we can, as much power as we can, at least 10% lifesteal, recovery is important, not that much as 1st three stats I listed here

Companions:
-any augment: my choice was Ioun Stone of Might (bonus to stamina regen, always welcome), put into some Profane/Bonding or Empowered runestones into offense slot and Eldritch runestones into defense slot (for stats bonus), give your companion Loyal Avenger gear (power, crit, arpen) and put enchantments as for yourself
-Erinyes of Belial (purple) – bonus 10% Critical Severity
-Fire Archon (purple) – bonus 7% damage to foes that are under 30% HP
-Air Archon (purple) – bonus 5% damage to foes that are not at full health (treat it as: to everyone)
-as fifth you can take any companion, it can be Intellect Devourer or Blink Dog for CA bonus, I took Pseudodragon years ago (yeah I don’t like to run out of stamina)

Rotation: first let tank to get full aggro, you don’t want to be dead mage, do you? I like to start combat building some Arcane Mastery stacks (aim biggest enemy and hold Scorching Burst; boom, smolder!), then cast Icy Terrain at their feets (Rimefire Smolder, Chill, Freeze), strike toughest foe with Fanning the Flame (count Chill stacks for maximum damage) and let them all die!
Depending of battle: you will use Stealtime for trashmobs and Ray of Enfeeblement for bosses to debuff. I’d say put RoE before Fanning the Flame to get maximum efectivness, I might be wrong, nobody’s 100% right 😉
You can also spam with Chilling Cloud and Scorching Burst;that 2nd is more for Arcane stacks, CC helps with keeping Smolder burning all the way up), use what you like most 🙂

Well that’s it, I hope you all like my guide, I’m waiting for your questions, comments, ideas, suggestions. If you want to ask me in game: Samantha@wikingowski
P.S. I’m proud of you that you got so far with reading this

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UPDATED on August 10th 2018! What was added to this guide for Mod 14 and what also was update on the latest update of the guide on August 10th 2018? :- I added a variation with a picture that’s important of another loadout – Basically, it’s my same build in another loadout form without […]

Some comments:
Race: Drow. If you are aiming for a buffer/ debuffer CW, drow is essential as darkfire (the drow racial bonus) has a chance to apply a 10% debuff against tagets, increasing the parties damage against those targets by 10% per stack. Furthermore, darkfire does stack and has a chance to proc off of every single attack.
Feats: Abyss of chaos is excellent as it has a chance to proc darkfire.
Weapon enchantment: Bilethorn or lightning, because either hit rapidly and further increase your darkfire procs.

With all of the above combined, you can get 4 or 5 darkfire stacks on a target, which is a 40-50% party effectiveness increase.

Then class features:
I recommend combustive action over chilling presence, you playing a debuffer, the extra damage you would gain from chilling presence means nothing in the larger scope of things compared to the debuff from combustive action, remember, combustive is a 24% debuff on all damage sources (it doesn’t work as advertised on the tooltip) and it benefits the entire party, I would definitely pick combustive over chilling presence for a debuffer, on any occasion.

Feats: Nightmare wizardry is like. the. main. reason. to. go. renegade. Not chaos magic, nightmare wizardry. 2/3 of the buffs do nothing in a geared party (nexus and growth) the only 1 still making a difference being fury, the reason to play renegade is nightmare wizardry, not the renegade capstone.